State-sponsored mentors provide critical support

David R. Tabatadze’s fledgling biotechnology business is partly named after one mentor, and now he’s getting a boost from some additional mentors.

ZATA Pharmaceuticals Inc., a startup company housed in a tiny laboratory about the size of a closet, has been receiving advice in recent weeks from experienced professionals under a program called MassCONNECT that is run by MassBio, the state’s biotech trade group.

Mr. Tabatadze, the company’s president, will have a chance to show what he’s done with their advice on Dec. 18 when he and other entrepreneurs selected by MassBio for intensive assistance will make presentations to potential investors and collaborators. The trade group has already put the entrepreneurs through a business development “boot camp” and helped the entrepreneurs with networking, a critical activity for those who need to find assistance starting a business.

Starting a business, especially in a capital-intensive field with long research and development timelines, is no easy task. MassBio started its program to offer evaluation and advice to entrepreneurs as they raise money and plan their strategies. The program’s mentors have experience in everything from science to business development to patents.

Mentoring itself is not a novel notion. Many entrepreneurs find their own informal mentors. The volunteers of the Service Corps of Retired Executives, also known as SCORE, offer free advice to businesspeople across the country.

Mentors can be invaluable to less experienced people starting life science businesses, according to John A. Tagliamonte, chief business officer of HemoShear LLC of Virginia and a mentor in the MassCONNECT program since 2009. Scientists especially may not have the business experience critical to telling others about their innovation and settling on a way to exploit it, he said.

“In ZATA’s case, David had a great technology and really didn’t know how to describe it well for an investment audience, and that’s often the case with academics,” said Mr. Tagliamonte, who is one of the mentors advising Mr. Tabatadze. “We helped him find the killer app.”

Mr. Tabatadze’s “killer app” is a way to deliver genetic drugs into cells in the body, and it grew from work he did with the scientist he considers his true mentor, the late Dr. Paul C. Zamecnik.

Dr. Zamecnik co-discovered transfer RNA, a molecule involved in assembling amino acids into proteins. He followed that landmark work in the 1950s with years of research showing that synthetic molecules made from nucleic acids could block messenger RNA and thwart genes. The concept was known as antisense technology, and it spawned a field of study that produced two approved drugs. It also led to a company, Hybridon Inc., which tried to develop an antisense treatment for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Mr. Tabatadze, who obtained a doctorate from the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry in Russia in 1993, arrived in the United States in 1994 to work as a post-doctoral researcher with Dr. Zamecnik. He worked for Hybridon from 1996 to 1998.

After Hybridon closed, the men remained friends and collaborators. They formed ZATA Pharmaceuticals, naming the venture after the combination of the first two letters from each man’s last name, in 2008. Dr. Zamecnik died in 2009.

“Definitely he was a mentor, not only in science,” Mr. Tabatadze said. “I wanted to be like him.”

ZATA aims to solve a problem with medical treatments made from nucleic acids, the building blocks of genes. Developers have struggled to deliver the treatments into patients’ cells.

ZATA’s approach involves synthesizing nucleic acid strands called oligonucleotides so the bases have negative and positive electrical charges. Mr. Tabatadze said this should allow the oligonucleotides to remain stable and better penetrate cell walls, meaning patients could receive smaller doses with less toxicity.

He has thrown his savings behind the venture and works out of a cramped lab at the Massachusetts Biomedical Innovations business incubator at 100 Barber Ave. Next is an effort to find funding to advance the research, which he does with assistance from a handful of scientists at different institutions.

“If I can persuade somebody to give a little bit of money, a few hundred thousand dollars, I can prove this problem is solved,” Mr. Tabatadze said.

That’s where the MassCONNECT mentors have come in. Mr. Tabatadze was one of three entrepreneurs chosen for the most recent MassCONNECT program, along with a Boston company creating a diagnostic for prostate cancer and a Cambridge company developing a way to extend the circulation of peptide-based drugs in the body.

The mentors advised Mr. Tabatadze to alter his public presentation to include information on the competitive landscape in his field, the “flow chart” of steps he would follow in developing his business and the amount of money he wants, according to mentor Dalia Cohen, founder and president of Winchester-based consulting firm ALN Associates.